Meet Bishop Eaton

The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton was elected as the ELCA’s fourth presiding bishop at the 2013 ELCA Churchwide Assembly. Born in Cleveland on April 2, 1955, Eaton earned a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School...

Luther and Lutheranism

Martin Luther was eight years old when Christopher Columbus set sail from Europe and landed in the Western Hemisphere. Luther was a young monk and priest when Michaelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel in Rome...

ELCA Good Gifts Catalog

Assignment Process

Assignment completes candidacy for all people, including those ordained in another Lutheran church or Christian tradition, moving them toward first call and admittance to the appropriate roster in the ELCA...

Book review: Lifeblood

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​Here’s a book review written by Mark Anderson, NE Iowa Synod. Thanks, Mark!Perry, Alex. Lifeblood: How to Change the World One Dead Mosquito at a Time. New York: Public Affairs, 2011.

Alex
Perry is a journalist who shadowed philanthropist Ray Chambers, a Wall
Street wizard who accumulated a vast fortune and then sought the most
effective way to give it away. Chambers made his fortune as the former
Chairman of Wesray Capital Corporation,
a private equity holding company. As Chambers studied global poverty
he discovered that Malaria is often the cause of sickness, which lowers
family income as well as national productivity including agricultural
production. Worse yet, while malaria breeds poverty, poverty boosts
malaria (p.17). Chambers invested a large portion of his own resources
in the fight against malaria and then sought to leverage his
contribution by inviting his financial peers to also contribute and by
inviting his close friend, President Bush, to take up the cause. There
is even a mention of his meeting with “leaders of a Lutheran
denomination in the US that maintained a wide missionary network on the
continent and had also decided to raise funds for malaria” (p.90).
Through his efforts Chambers could clearly demonstrate that the use of
nets, pesticide, and medication could dramatically reduce the instances
of malaria and turn devastated communities into vibrant economic
centers. For this Chambers was named the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Malaria.

The book is very affirming of the possibility of eradicating malaria
from the globe in the next few years. The author, Alex Perry, also
makes a strong case for the involvement of big business in the fight
against malaria as this disease cuts deep into corporate profits.
However, Perry is very critical NGO Aid groups and charities as being
too in efficient and not entrepreneurial enough. His admiration for the
business community gives him amnesia on the history of corporate greed
and its effects on the developing nations. He is also blind to the
inefficiencies and stagnation of even the most capitalistic of
enterprises. In my opinion, this would have been a much more useful
book had Perry spent more time and malaria and less time with a
political axe to grind.

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